Travel recruitment company

Travel recruitment company

Travel recruitment company tips for candidate reference checking

Travel recruitment company

As any travel recruitment company will tell you, while interviews reveal a lot about potential hires, they may leave some stones unturned. You need an extra insurance policy that could save you the cost of a bad hire, and that extra insurance could be perfecting the art of a candidate reference.

Reference checks can give you further insight into a travel candidate’s experience, abilities, work ethic and more.

Too often, though, hiring managers hurry through or even skip this vital step. To be more confident of a candidate’s abilities before making a job offer, it helps to find out more about that person from other sources and to complete a candidate reference check properly.

A specialist travel recruitment company understand that it’s your one opportunity to ask the questions that are going to reveal whether or not your candidate is the perfect fit for the travel role you have available.

Asking the right questions, not just questions for the sake of asking questions, could save you a great deal of time, money and heartache down the road.

To improve your chances of recruiting successfully and gleaning the most accurate information about your travel candidates, here are 10 best practices for checking candidate references from a specialist travel recruitment company:

Conduct at least two verbal reference checks

Plan your questions carefully

Get expert guidance from a travel recruitment company

Confirm the Candidate’s Job title, dates of employment and work duties

What is your relationship to the candidate?

Ask open-ended questions

Listen closely for things that are notsaid

Your allowed to ask a hypothetical question

Document the calls

Don’t pass the buck

Travel recruitment company tips to perfecting a candidate reference

Conduct at least two verbal reference checks: Before you bring anybody new into your travel team, you should really carry out two verbal reference checks. It’s the perfect way for you to understand how they really perform on the job (the good and maybe even the not so good) before perhaps learning the hard way.

It’s quick and easy to email questions to everyone on a candidate’s list of references, but this method will often not yield the best results. Your email may never even make it to their inbox if they have a strict spam filter. Speaking directly with a person is ideal, as people tend to go into more detail in phone conversations.

Plan your questions carefully: Get organised and before you interview, compile a list of questions you’ll ask to develop a candidate reference. Here are some examples:

– What were the candidate’s primary responsibilities and last job title?

– What was it like to work with this candidate?

– Would you rehire them?

Get expert guidance: Reference check regulations are always changing. If you have any doubts about what questions you can or can’t ask about a candidate, be sure to consult your company’s legal or human resources department before making contact.

Confirm the Candidate’s job title, dates of employment and work duties: Always verify this to ensure the information provided is true and accurate.

What is your relationship to the candidate? This question allows a hiring manager to confirm whether a job seeker and a reference ever worked together and perhaps to assess their relationship. In knowing the specific nature of the relationship, a hiring manager can better gauge the information provided.

Ask open-ended questions: Word your questions in such a way that it requires thoughtful answers and avoid putting words in the referee’s mouth. For example, don’t ask, “You think Jill is a team player, right?” A better way to phrase this would be: “Can you tell me about Jill’s team-working skills?”

Listen closely for things that are not said: Pay attention to cues that indicate a non-endorsement. These may include hesitations in a referee’s response, or qualifying statements like, “He was a fairly good ticketer.” Also, the person’s tone might be telling when talking about certain aspects of a former employee.

You’re allowed to ask a hypothetical question: One question you might want to consider asking at the very end of every conversation with a referee, is if they would re-employee the candidate. This should be the only hypothetical question in the entire discussion. The answer to this question can speak volumes

Document the calls: It’s always a relief when you hear positive feedback about a candidate you are keen to hire. In fact, you may have even already made them an offer but it’s still important to take notes. Create a spreadsheet and log the date and time of each reference check.

Don’t pass the buck: Busy managers often delegate reference checks to human resources staff or another member of the interview team. But if you have direct responsibility for your new employee, it’s important that you take the time to speak to their referees personally — because you have the most at stake.

In a competitive hiring market for travel professionals, you may be tempted to make an immediate job offer to a promising candidate who aces the interview. But rushing the process may lead to mistakes. So, always ask for references and take the time to call all the people on the list. Checking a candidate reference is a guaranteed way to confirm that your golden candidate is the real deal.